"it's like deja-vu, all over again." - Yogi BerraToday marks one of my favorite days of the year: Opening Day in Major League Baseball.

John Michel's insight:

Opening Day reminds us of all that can be great - it's a fresh start for 30 baseball teams, and their millions of fans. It's also a fresh start for you. Whether you're a CEO, entrepreneur, manager, entry level employee or student, you can apply these simple lessons to become a better leader. Hope does, in fact, spring eternal.

One of the fundamental inconsistencies we see in workplaces today is the gap between leaders’ desire for “empowered and engaged” employees and what actually ends up happening during the personal interactions of leaders with employees. Often, these actions inadvertently have the effect of reducing the employee’s drive toward empowerment.

When leaders make mistakes, we point to them and make scapegoats of them. Often the organization follows the leader over the cliff. The problem is not leaders making mistakes, the problem is leaders giving the orders.

Earlier this week, I wrote an article about the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announcing a new partnership with Warriors4Wireless to expand the 2-year-old nonprofit's training program to turn returning…

John Michel's insight:

A Dallas military veteran has teamed up with a tech CEO in New York to hire and train veterans in teams (without using their GI Bill benefits) and deploy them to clients in squads. It all started two years ago when retired U.S. Air Force Brigadier General John Michel helped Karen Ross, CEO of New York-based technology consulting firm Sharp Decisions, create the V.E.T.S. (Vocation, Education and Training for Service members program.

Natural leaders are hard to come by. Almost half of companies surveyed by Workplace Trends said “leadership” is the hardest skill to find in employees. Only 36 percent of employees consider “leadership” a strength in their organization. The implications are clear. We need to nurture and develop young, engaged leaders to fill roles Boomers and Gen X will be stepping out of in the future. Here are some thoughts on ways we can do this before it’s too late:

Blatter has something in common with everyone from Syria's Bashar al-Assad to any number of the world's current and past despots. Killing the king is risky, and nobody is eager to volunteer. It's the reason why bad managers tend to hang around too.

Great innovators have the habit of combining surprising things. Creativity happens when two things collide to create a whole new idea, and insight requires that we solve challenges with new perspective. That happens best when you work with those outside your industry or field.

Trustworthy people aim to establish meaningful relationships with their friends, clients, and co-workers. If you can’t demonstrate compassion for others, then why should anyone care about about you? To become a person who can be counted on, watch out for these ten things trustworthy people don’t do.

(From the article): Trustworthy people express gratitude for the people who help them. They are confident in their abilities, but they also accept the fact that they would be nothing without the support of those who made their success possible.

Try these questions, see how they work, and find the questions that work best for you. Consider open-ended questions, rather than questions that have only one right answer or that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” The most powerful questions are those that expand your thinking.

(From the article): Try these questions, see how they work, and find the questions that work best for you. Consider open-ended questions, rather than questions that have only one right answer or that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” The most powerful questions are those that expand your thinking.

When we hear about unethical executives whose careers and companies have gone down in flames, it’s sadly unsurprising. Hubris and greed have a way of catching up with people, who then lose the power and wealth they’ve so fervently pursued. But is the opposite also true? Do highly principled leaders and their organizations perform especially well?

In challenging economic times, one of the easiest items to cut from the budget is training and development. The rationale is understandable. Rarely will any organization see immediate negative consequences when training is discontinued. It looks like found money in the budgeting process. don't fall in that trap.

All too often, bad habits get in the way of effective leadership. We succumb to the effects of our routines, and lose ground as examples for our workforce. These are some of the worst habits that can compromise your ability to lead:

Everyone gets scared sometimes. In life. At work. We're afraid of being rejected, disappointing others, getting hurt, having cockroaches crawl in our ears (OK, maybe that one's not universal . . . ), missing out on important things. In a word: We're afraid of failing.

One phrase that I use to overcome fear or hesitation to do something that might be risky is to say to myself "just do it" (JDI). I also practice this with my team....after a few minutes of discussing whether we will do a task or trying to decide to take a certain action, I try to sense whether we are just scared to jump. I patiently wait for them to finish deliberating and then simply say "just do it". It's liberating. Try it.

Genius covers a lot of sins. A great product is a great product, and you don’t have to do everything right to be successful. Most customers don’t care how the sausage gets made, as long as it tastes good.

Genius covers a lot of sins. A great product is a great product, and you don’t have to do everything right to be successful. Most customers don’t care how the sausage gets made, as long as it tastes good.

There are many leaders who believe that they should focus only on business. That employee relationships are meant to be professional not personal. That there is too little time in the day to waste it on small talk. That employees are hired to do a job and they should get down to it.

If your organization cares about innovation or transforming customer service or being data-driven, how do you lead by example? In Laszlo Bock’s otherwise superb Google-based book on performance analytics—Work Rules!—the phrase “lead by example” is nowhere to be found. That’s both a pity and opportunity missed because, as Webb stresses, leading by example is what truly empowers small teams and teamwork.

While I totally believe there are elements of Seal training that can be applied to business, however the big difference is, that in business our lives are not directly and physically at risk so we tend to minimize the role. It boils down to attitude.

In Hilary Scarlett’s Melcrum article of February 2013, Neuroscience – helping employees through change, she described some of the insights neuroscience is bringing to why people find organizational change difficult, and more usefully, what we c

Neuroscience, the study of the nervous system including the brain, is set to transform our understanding of how people respond to the world of work. If we can understand the brain better, then we can help organizations, leaders, and all employees work more efficiently and effectively.

Interesting stuff on impact of neuroscientific way of learning on performance and coping with change.

A research amongst leaders from four large organisations showed "learning about how our brains work can help us manage ourselves and lead people through change in more effective ways. (Because) it provides important insights into how we respond to change, what makes it easier for us to cope with uncertainty, what helps us focus, what affects our motivation and openness to change."

All workplaces have some challenges and negative characteristics, so it can be difficult to determine if your workplace has a normal amount of challenges, is seriously dysfunctional, or possibly really toxic. Here are five signs that will help you determine the degree to which your work environment may be dangerous to your mental health.

In a world filled with agencies, most of which offer the same services at roughly the same prices, the ultimate difference between success and failure is whether people want to work with your teams or not. It’s the same on the inside.

(From the article): Keep it simple. Life is complicated enough. Clients and colleagues expect us to be expert enough to keep things simple and easy to follow. It’s a constant struggle to focus more on the story you’re trying to tell than on the slides. But by reminding myself and my team that we’re sitting down with a client to have a nice conversation, we might be able to avoid coming across as the type of people who overly complicate things or act in a way that’s self-important.

In leadership, we wish all was beautiful in what we do and what others do yet no one said what is worthwhile would be easy. Beauty comes through in what we do from within and from what we tap within others. Leadership is about blooming.

What makes a lousy leader? That is easy, they do the opposite of what great leaders do. Not so fast. Our biases forget the differences between leadership we agree with, and leadership from people we do not like.

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